Dorene O’Brien is a fiction writer and a teacher of creative writing at the College for Creative Studies and Wayne State University in Detroit. She has won numerous awards for her fiction, including the Bridport Prize for her short story “#12 Dagwood on Rye,” Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award for “Riding the Hubcap,” and the New Millennium Writings Fiction Award for “Ovenbirds.” In 2004 she was also awarded a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.